Historically Accurate Crowd Rejoice... Indian Elephants sighted!

[Spino]

I was playtesting my elephant mod earlier this evening and it dawned on me that the War Elephants look different than I remember in this year's E3 video. In the video they were clearly Indian elephants and in the retail release of Rome they were changed back into African elephants. Either CA overlooked the fact that the Indian species were not enabled in the retail release or they decided to use the African variety because it is more recognizable and well.. cuter? Whatever.

Anyway I did a simple search in the Data directory and sure enough, there they were... Indian elephant files.

Simply open up the export_desc_unit.txt in the Data directory with Notepad and do a search for War Elephants.

Look for the 'mount' references and change the phrase 'elephant african' to 'elephant indian'. Voila!

type east elephant
dictionary east_elephant_african ; War Elephants
category cavalry
class heavy
voice_type Medium_1
soldier east_elephant_archer, 18, 6, 1
mount elephant indian

It works like a charm and they look great. The models and textures are excellent are not cruder versions from earlier builds. It brings the Seleucid and Parthian armies a little closer to reality and certainly opens up new modding possibilities... I'd love to see new skins that feature Indian armor designs for these beasts!

We should definitely request that CA officially restore these models in a future patch so MP'ers can use them without modding.

I'll post this over in the Dungeon so modders are aware of it.

Here's a link to the pic I posted over at TWC...

[Kraxis]

Nice!

I'm surprised noone else has commented on this.

[Ulstan]

Great find Spino :)

LOTR modders can rejoice too

http://stufs.wlu.edu/~davisjh/big_elephants.jpg

[Praylak]

African Elephant - average shoulder height: 10-13 feet
Asian Elephant - average shoulder height: 8-10 feet

So do they look a little smaller?

[Aymar de Bois Mauri]

Great find Spino :)

LOTR modders can rejoice too

http://stufs.wlu.edu/~davisjh/big_elephants.jpg

ROTFL Awesome!!!

[discovery1]

African Elephant - average shoulder height: 10-13 feet
Asian Elephant - average shoulder height: 8-10 feet

So do they look a little smaller?

The forest african elephants were actually smaller than the indian variety. The big sub-saharan one were to difficult to acquire and train

Edit:Do the large elephants do more damage or no?

[Praylak]

The forest african elephants were actually smaller than the indian variety. The big sub-saharan one were to difficult to acquire and train

Yes, it's true. I know nothing of elephants so allow me to rephrase the question.

Is there a size difference between the two elephants modelled in the game?

[Ulstan]

Both the african and indian elephants are bigger than the smaller forest elephants.

[son of spam]

Great find Spino :)

LOTR modders can rejoice too

http://stufs.wlu.edu/~davisjh/big_elephants.jpg

The description CA wrote for those eles is pretty funny too:

{cheat_oliphants} Yubtseb Elephants

{cheat_oliphants_descr}
These mysterious creatures from the middle principalities of farthest Terra Nova are the children of of G'nitek'ram, the God of Shiny Things That Man Does Not Need But Desires Anyway. Dark and foul are the ceremonies that summon them; great and scary are their tusks; terrible is their gaze; unwashed are their riders; cruel and unforgiving their masters! Flee in terror! Run for the hills!


{cheat_oliphants_descr_short}
These terrible creatures are fearsome monsters indeed, called forth from the farthest corners of distant lands to strike terror into the very souls of enemies.

lol

[metatron]

IIRC, all we know about the N. African Elephant is conjecture as the Romans caused it to go extinct.

[Spino]

African Elephant - average shoulder height: 10-13 feet
Asian Elephant - average shoulder height: 8-10 feet

So do they look a little smaller?

Yes, Indian elephants are smaller than African elephants in the game. Oddly enough the default War Elephants seem slightly smaller than Armored Elephants even though they are the same breed. CA slightly enlarged the Armored Elephant model to make it look more menacing.

[Devastatin Dave]

You're the man Spino!!!

[Krosword]

So you have found a way to enable those from E3 pics. .. Have you tried enabling the REAL egyptian walls that were featured on early screenshots? Those were absolutely spot on, not the general 'african' type. Do you konw what I mean? One of the first screenshots had those walls with a large army in desert next to it (all spread out - really nice pic).
And great job on the elephants, and those yubteseb elephants are 'bestbuy' backwards elephants, and the land they come from are 'marketing' but backwards. Funny sense of humour CA got, but ok, this was probably mentioned here.

[Haido]

The description CA wrote for those eles is pretty funny too:

{cheat_oliphants} Yubtseb Elephants

{cheat_oliphants_descr}
These mysterious creatures from the middle principalities of farthest Terra Nova are the children of of G'nitek'ram, the God of Shiny Things That Man Does Not Need But Desires Anyway. Dark and foul are the ceremonies that summon them; great and scary are their tusks; terrible is their gaze; unwashed are their riders; cruel and unforgiving their masters! Flee in terror! Run for the hills!


{cheat_oliphants_descr_short}
These terrible creatures are fearsome monsters indeed, called forth from the farthest corners of distant lands to strike terror into the very souls of enemies.

lol

Yeah, and what is Yubtseb and G'nitek'ram backwards?

[The Sword of Cao Cao]

Bestbuy and Marketing.

[Haido]

What is Gni'tat'S eht Sou'ivbo backwards?

[Spino]

So you have found a way to enable those from E3 pics. .. Have you tried enabling the REAL egyptian walls that were featured on early screenshots? Those were absolutely spot on, not the general 'african' type. Do you konw what I mean? One of the first screenshots had those walls with a large army in desert next to it (all spread out - really nice pic).
And great job on the elephants, and those yubteseb elephants are 'bestbuy' backwards elephants, and the land they come from are 'marketing' but backwards. Funny sense of humour CA got, but ok, this was probably mentioned here.

I never noticed the difference in walls. Maybe they are still in there. There's lots of stuff in the files that are not used by the game. People are finding lots of other units, some new but most of them are old. Many are the same exact units used in Time Commanders.

The forest african elephants were actually smaller than the indian variety. The big sub-saharan one were to difficult to acquire and train

Edit:Do the large elephants do more damage or no?

While there are minor differences in Morale and Training levels between the various elephant units in Rome the only real differences in Attack/Defense abilities and Hit Points exist between the game's three basic types; Elephant, War Elephant and Armored Elephant. Now that we can add Indian elephants to the mix it we can better differentiate the species from one another.